“If the rules are dropped, US ISPs would be allowed to gather data on customers, their browsing histories, viewing habits, location and app usage. This package of data can then be sold to advertisers or marketing firms without letting customers know who is getting it or how it was gathered.”

US politicians have voted to remove rules that demanded ISPs got permission from customers before selling their browsing histories. The US Senate voted by a narrow majority to repeal the rules that were first approved in October 2016. Politicians who called for the rules to be dropped said they were “harmful”. The decision was called a “crushing loss” for privacy by digital rights group the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF). The rules were drawn up when the US Federal Communications Commission (FCC) was overseen by a broadly democratic leadership.

The requirements, which also covered the ways ISPs stopped data being stolen, were due to come into force by December 2017. The Trump presidency led to changes at the top of the FCC and prompted scrutiny of some of its decisions – including the broadband privacy provisions. Members of the US Senate who introduced the measure to overturn the FCC rules said they were “overreaching” and could “stifle” economic growth. ISPs and advertising groups had lobbied for the rules to be dropped.

The Tor software protects you by bouncing your communications around a distributed network of relays run by volunteers all around the world: it prevents somebody watching your Internet connection from learning what sites you visit, it prevents the sites you visit from learning your physical location, and it lets you access sites which are blocked.

Tor Browser lets you use Tor on Windows, Mac OS X, or Linux without needing to install any software. It can run off a USB flash drive, comes with a pre-configured web browser to protect your anonymity, and is self-contained (portable).

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Installation Instructions

Want Tor to really work?

You need to change some of your habits, as some things won’t work exactly as you are used to.

A) Use Tor Browser

Tor does not protect all of your computer’s Internet traffic when you run it. Tor only protects your applications that are properly configured to send their Internet traffic through Tor. To avoid problems with Tor configuration, we strongly recommend you use the Tor Browser. It is pre-configured to protect your privacy and anonymity on the web as long as you’re browsing with Tor Browser itself. Almost any other web browser configuration is likely to be unsafe to use with Tor.

B) Don’t torrent over Tor

Torrent file-sharing applications have been observed to ignore proxy settings and make direct connections even when they are told to use Tor. Even if your torrent application connects only through Tor, you will often send out your real IP address in the tracker GET request, because that’s how torrents work. Not only do you deanonymize your torrent traffic and your other simultaneous Tor web traffic this way, you also slow down the entire Tor network for everyone else.

C) Don’t enable or install browser plugins

Tor Browser will block browser plugins such as Flash, RealPlayer, Quicktime, and others: they can be manipulated into revealing your IP address. Similarly, we do not recommend installing additional addons or plugins into Tor Browser, as these may bypass Tor or otherwise harm your anonymity and privacy.

D) Use HTTPS versions of websites

Tor will encrypt your traffic to and within the Tor network, but the encryption of your traffic to the final destination website depends upon on that website. To help ensure private encryption to websites, Tor Browser includes HTTPS Everywhere to force the use of HTTPS encryption with major websites that support it. However, you should still watch the browser URL bar to ensure that websites you provide sensitive information to display a blue or green URL bar button, include https:// in the URL, and display the proper expected name for the website. Also see EFF’s interactive page explaining how Tor and HTTPS relate.

E) Don’t open documents downloaded through Tor while online

Tor Browser will warn you before automatically opening documents that are handled by external applications. DO NOT IGNORE THIS WARNING. You should be very careful when downloading documents via Tor (especially DOC and PDF files, unless you use the PDF viewer that’s built into Tor Browser) as these documents can contain Internet resources that will be downloaded outside of Tor by the application that opens them. This will reveal your non-Tor IP address. If you must work with DOC and/or PDF files, we strongly recommend either using a disconnected computer, downloading the free VirtualBox and using it with a virtual machine image with networking disabled, or using Tails. Under no circumstances is it safe to use BitTorrent and Tor together, however.

F) Use bridges and/or find company

Tor tries to prevent attackers from learning what destination websites you connect to. However, by default, it does not prevent somebody watching your Internet traffic from learning that you’re using Tor. If this matters to you, you can reduce this risk by configuring Tor to use a Tor bridge relay rather than connecting directly to the public Tor network. Ultimately the best protection is a social approach: the more Tor users there are near you and the more diverse their interests, the less dangerous it will be that you are one of them. Convince other people to use Tor, too!

The US Senate today voted to eliminate broadband privacy rules that would have required ISPs to get consumers’ explicit consent before selling or sharing Web browsing data and other private information with advertisers and other companies. The rules were approved in October 2016 by the Federal Communications Commission’s then-Democratic leadership, but are opposed by the FCC’s new Republican majority and Republicans in Congress. The Senate today used its power under the Congressional Review Act to ensure that the FCC rulemaking “shall have no force or effect” and to prevent the FCC from issuing similar regulations in the future. The House, also controlled by Republicans, would need to vote on the measure before the privacy rules are officially eliminated. President Trump could also preserve the privacy rules by issuing a veto. If the House and Trump agree with the Senate’s action, ISPs won’t have to seek customer approval before sharing their browsing histories and other private information with advertisers.

The Senate vote was 50-48, with lawmakers voting entirely along party lines. “President Trump may be outraged by fake violations of his own privacy, but every American should be alarmed by the very real violation of privacy that will result [from] the Republican roll-back of broadband privacy protections,” Sen. Ed Markey (D-Mass.) said after the vote. The Senate measure was introduced two weeks ago by Sen. Jeff Flake (R-Ariz.) and 23 Republican co-sponsors. Flake said at the time that he is trying to “protect consumers from overreaching Internet regulation.” FCC Chairman Ajit Pai argues that consumers would be confused if there are different privacy rules for ISPs than for online companies like Google and Facebook. “American consumers should not have to be lawyers or engineers to figure out if their information is protected,” Pai recently told Democratic lawmakers. Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas) argued today that the privacy rules “hurt job creators and stifle economic growth.” Cornyn also said the FCC’s privacy rulemaking involves the “government picking winners and losers,” and was among the “harmful rules and regulations put forward by the Obama administration at the last moment.”

The US Senate has voted to overturn internet privacy rules passed by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) last October. The rules were put in place to protect web users, banning internet service providers (ISPs) from sharing consumers’ web browsing data, including history and financial, health, communications and location information, without their prior approval. ISPs have a lot to gain from the Senate’s decision, which will almost certainly lead to them getting the green light to sell people’s web data to advertising companies without permission. The House needs to vote the same way before the FCC’s rules can be scrapped, though President Trump has the power to veto any decision and keep them in place.

If the Senate’s decision is approved, the FCC will be prevented from introducing similar rules in the future, and will have to create a new set of privacy requirements. “This resolution is a direct attack on consumer rights, on privacy, on rules that afford basic protection against intrusive and illegal interference with consumers’ use of social media sites and websites that often they talk for granted,” said Senator Richard Blumenthal ahead of the vote.

In a victory for internet service providers like Verizon, Comcast, and AT&T, the US Senate on Thursday voted to kill a set of Obama-era privacy regulations passed by the Federal Communication Commission in October. The most notable part of the rules, which has not taken effect, would require ISPs to get explicit consent before sharing consumers’ web-browsing data and other personal information with advertisers. The vote passed 50 to 48 along party lines, with Republicans in favor of the repeal and Democrats against. They were voting on a resolution proposed earlier this month by Republican Sen. Jeff Flake of Arizona and cosponsored by 24 other Republicans that broadly calls for the FCC’s privacy rules to “have no force or effect.”

The resolution was proposed via the Congressional Review Act, a seldom-used law that the GOP is more widely applying to repeal federal regulations they contested late in the Obama administration with a simple majority vote. Republicans have a majority in both chambers of Congress. The resolution will now need to pass in the House of Representatives — where Republican Rep. Marsha Blackburn of Tennessee proposed a similar resolution earlier this month — then be signed by President Donald Trump before going into effect. Because the resolution uses the CRA, the FCC would be outlawed from creating similar privacy regulations if the repeal is signed by Trump.

Federal regulations designed to give you more control over your web browsing history and other personal information may soon be eliminated. There are steps you can take to protect yourself — but you’ll have to do more than set your browser to private mode. And there is no perfect solution, experts agree. The Republican-controlled Senate voted Thursday to roll back rules that would have required internet service providers, such as Comcast or CenturyLink, to ask for permission before tracking and selling your information. That includes everything from where you are to what you’re looking at online. A provider could infer that you’re sick, for example, because you looked at WebMD. The FCC approved the rules in October, and they had yet to go into effect. If the House also votes to eliminate them, any provider will be able to track and sell your data without telling you.

The steps in Congress would remove an extra safeguard at a time when people are using more and more internet-connected devices and providers are investing more in targeted advertising. You probably already know that companies like Facebook (FB, Tech30) and Google (GOOG) use your data to target their ads. There are a number of tools, including Privacy Badger and Disconnect, that prevent advertisers from tracking your activity. But they will not block your service provider from collecting your data. Further, browsing in “incognito” or private mode does not prevent your internet provider from knowing which sites you visit. Private mode only prevents the browser you are using from storing your internet history. (Comcast will still know when you view adult content, even if Chrome forgets.)

Yesterday the Senate voted straight down party lines to prevent FCC privacy rules for ISPs that require opt-in consent from users before any personal information is sold to third party marketers, Russian spies, the CIA and QVC probably. These rules were to have taken effect later this year, but the Republican party isn’t interested in your pithy little privacy issues so they introduced a measure to make sure ISPs can get all up in your internet demographics at will. I made a decision regarding my behavior on the internet a long time ago, same decision as you folks littering Facebook FB +0.54% with pictures of gross babies and dumb dogs. We all decided, collectively, that our so-called internet privacy was either something we didn’t understand how to protect or didn’t give two winks about. It’s generally the latter until something challenges that perception of privacy and suddenly we think the internet is a place where companies should respect our private bubbles and not sell our data as an income stream. Well la dee freaking da.

The argument against the ISPs having access to your browsing history, or any internet use is flimsy at best. It assumes an Internet of Things (IoT) lifestyle, which if you already have, you stopped caring about your personal data privacy a long time ago. “Your home broadband provider can know when you wake up each day—either by knowing the time each morning that you log on to the Internet to check the weather/news of the morning, or through a connected device in your home,” Sen. Bill Nelson (D-Fla.) rattled off from the scary internet privacy playbook during floor debate yesterday. “And that provider may know immediately if you are not feeling well — assuming you decide to peruse the Internet like most of us to get a quick check on your symptoms. In fact, your broadband provider may know more about your health and your reaction to illness — than you are willing to share with your doctor.”

The US Senate on March 23 voted 50-48, with two senators absent, in favour of a bill that will let Internet Service Providers (ISPs) sell their customers’ online behaviour data to advertisers without getting express permission from the users themselves. This is being seen as one of the biggest invasions of online privacy in the country in recent times. While the Bill is yet to become an Act — it is yet to be passed by the US Congress — people are already scrambling to hide their data and usage through various means, like proxies and Virtual Private Networks (VPNs), which offer network connections that let people establish a secure connection over public Internet to private networks at a remote location.

Why are VPNs used?

Basically, install a VPN and do what you want on the Internet through it, and there are little chances of your activity being logged by your ISP. Of course, some VPNs themselves log user data and behaviour, but that may be to ensure that nothing illegal is going on. Don’t use them if you have privacy concerns. Many corporate organisations also often use VPNs when they have employees working for home, to ensure that their sensitive data do not fall into the hands of miscreants. Here are five VPNs you can use to hide your online behaviour — or most of it — from your ISPs: